Kitabı oku: «Roland Cashel, Volume II (of II)», sayfa 14

CHAPTER XX. LORD KILGOFF DETERMINES TO “MEET” ROLAND

 
Is he not too old for such gambols?
 

– Sir Raymond.

Cashel was in no mood to join his company after such a scene, and hastening upstairs, he entered his dressing-room. What was his surprise to see that Linton was seated in an easy-chair, before the fire, enjoying a cigar and a new novel, with all the cool negligence of his unruffled nature.

“At last!” cried he, as Cashel entered. “I have been waiting here most impatiently to know how you got through it.”

“Through what! – how – what do you mean?”

“That affair with Kilgoff. I slipped away when I saw that he would enter the boudoir, after having coughed and sneezed like a grampus, in the hope of attracting your attention; but you were so confoundedly engrossed by my Lady’s agreeability, – so excessively tender – ”

“Linton, I must stop you at once. I may barter some of my own self-respect for quietness’ sake, and let you talk this way of me, but you shall not do so of another.”

“Hang it, man, she is an older friend than yourself. I have known her these seven years – as little more than a child.”

“Your friendship would seem a costly blessing, if you understand its duties always in this fashion.”

“I hope it will admit of a little frankness, at all events,” said he, affecting a laugh. “It will be too bad if you both fall out with me for watching over your interests.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I will be plain enough. I have seen for many a day back what has been going on. I perceived the very commencement of the mischief, when probably neither she nor you dreamed of it; and, resigning all the esteem that years had cemented between us, I spoke to her. Ay, Roland, I told her what would happen. I said that qualities like yours could not be brought every day into contrast with those of poor Kilgoff without most unhappy comparisons. I explained to her, that if she did form an attachment to you, it could not be one of those passing flirtations that an easy code of fashion admits and sanctions; that you were a fellow whose generous nature could never descend to such heartless levity, and that there was no sacrifice of position and prospect you would hesitate to make for a woman that loved you; and I asked her flatly, would she bring such ruin upon you? The greater fool myself; I ought to have known better. She not only refused to listen to me, but actually resented my at-tempted kindness by actual injury. I don’t want to speak for myself here, so I ‘ll hasten on. It was all but a cut between us, for months before we met here. You may remember, in Dublin, we rarely even spoke to each other; we, who once had been like brother and sister!

“Well, before she was a week here, I saw that the danger I had dreaded so long was hourly becoming more imminent. You, very possibly, had not a serious thought upon the matter, but she had actually fallen in love! I suppose you must have played hero, at that shipwreck, in some very chivalrous fashion; however it was, my Lady had lost her heart, precisely at the same time that his Lordship had lost his head, – leaving you, I conjecture, in a very awkward dilemma. Seeing there was no time to lose, and resolving to sacrifice myself to save her, I made one more effort. I’ll not weary you with a narrative of my eloquence, nor repeat any of the ten-thousand-and-one reasons I gave for her shunning your society, and, if need were, leaving your house. The whole ended as I ought to have foreseen it would, – in an open breach between us; she candidly avowing that she would be my deadly enemy through life, and even procure a personal rupture between you and me, if pushed to it, by my ‘impertinent importunity,’ so she called it. I own to you I was completely dumfounded by this. I knew that she had courage for anything, and that, if she did care for a man, there would be a recklessness in the course she would follow that would defy guidance or direction, and so I abstained from any further interference; and, as you may have remarked yourself, I actually estranged myself from you.”

“I did remark that,” said Cashel, gravely.

“Well, to-night, when by mere accident Kilgoff and I had sauntered into the gallery and came upon you in the boudoir, I own frankly I was not sorry for it; unpleasant as such scenes are, they are better – a hundred thousand times better – than the sad consequences they anticipate; and even should anything take place personally, I ‘d rather see you stand Kilgoff’s fire at ‘twelve paces,’ than be exposed to the flash of my Lady’s eye at ‘one.’”

“Your friendly zeal,” said Cashel, with a very peculiar emphasis on the words, “would seem to have got the upper hand of your habitually sharp perception; there was nothing to fear in any part of my intimacy with Lady Kilgoff. I have been but too short a time conversant with fashionable life to forget more vulgar habits, and, among them, that which forbids a man to pay his addresses to the wife of another. I need not vindicate her Ladyship; that she has taken a warm, I shame not to say an affectionate, interest in my fortunes, may have been imprudent I know not what your code admits of or rejects, but her kindness demands all my gratitude, and, if need be, the defence that a man of honor should always be ready to offer for the cause of truth.”

“Don’t you perceive, Cashel, that all you are saying only proves what I have been asserting, – that, while you are actually ignorant of your danger, the peril is but the greater? I repeat it to you, however intact your heart may be, hers is in your keeping. I know this; nay, I say it advisedly – don’t shake your head and look so confident – I repeat it, I know this to be the case.”

“You know it?” said Cashel, as though Linton’s words had startled his convictions.

“I know it, and I ‘ll prove it, but upon one condition – your word of honor as to secrecy.” Cashel nodded, and Linton went on. “Some short time back, some one, under the shelter of the anonymous, wrote her a letter, stating that they had long watched her intimacy with you – grieving over it, and regretting that she should have yielded any portion of her affection to one whose whole life had been a series of deceptions; that your perjuries in Love’s Court were undeniable, and that you were actually married – legally and regularly married – to a young Spanish girl.”

“Was this told her?” said Cashel, gasping for breath.

“Yes, the very name was given – Maritaña, if I mistake not. Is there such a name?”

Cashel bent his head slightly in assent.

“How you had deserted this poor girl after having won her affections – ”

“This is false, sir; every word of it false!” said Cashel, purple with passion; “nor will I permit any man to drag her name before this world of slanderers in connection with such a tale. Great Heaven! what hypocrisy it is to have a horror for the assassin and the cut-throat, and yet give shelter, in your society, to those who stab character and poison reputation! I tell you, sir, that among those buccaneers you have so often sneered at, you’d not meet one base enough for this.”

“I think you are too severe upon this kind of transgression, Cashel,” said Linton, calmly. “It is as often prompted by mere idleness as malice. The great mass of people in this life have nothing to do, and they go wrong just for occupation. There may have been – there generally is – a little grain of truth amid all the chaff of fiction; there may, therefore, be a young lady whose name was – ”

“I forbid you to speak it. I knew her, and, girl as she was, she was not one to suffer insult in her presence, nor shall it be offered to her in her absence.”

“My dear fellow, your generous warmth should not be unjust, or else you will find few friends willing to incur your anger in the hope of doing you service. I never believed a word of this story. Marriage – adventure – even the young lady’s identity, I deemed all fictions together.”

Cashel muttered something he meant to be apologetic for his rudeness, and Linton was not slow in accepting even so unwilling a reparation.

“Of course I think no more of it,” cried he, with affected cordiality. “I was going to tell you how Lady Kilgoff received the tidings – exactly the very opposite to what her kind correspondent had intended. It actually seemed to encourage her in her passion, as though there was a similarity in your cases. Besides, she felt, perhaps, that she was not damaging your future career, as it might be asserted she had done, were you unmarried. These are mere guesses on my part. I own to you, I have little skill in reading the Machiavellism of a female heart; the only key to its mystery I know of is, ‘always suspect what is least likely.’”

“And I am to sit down patiently under all this calumny!” said Cashel, as he walked the room with hasty steps. “I am perhaps to receive at my table those whose amusement it is so to sport with my character and my fame!”

“It is a very naughty world, no doubt of it,” said Linton, lighting a fresh cigar; “and the worst of it is, it tempts one always to be as roguish as one’s neighbors for self-preservation.”

“You say I am not at liberty to speak of this letter to Lady Kilgoff?”

“Of course not; I am myself a defaulter in having told the matter to you.”

Cashel paced the room hurriedly; and what a whirlwind of opposing thoughts rushed through his brain! for while at times all Lady Kilgoff s warnings about Linton, all his own suspicions of his duplicity and deceit, were uppermost, there was still enough in Linton’s narrative, were it true, to account for Lady Kilgoff’s hatred of him. The counsels he had given, and she rejected, were enough to furnish a feud forever between them. At which side lay the truth? And then, this letter about Maritaña, – who was the writer? Could it be Linton himself? and if so, would he have ventured to allude to it?

These thoughts harassed and distressed him at every instant, and in his present feeling towards Linton he could not ask his aid to solve the mystery.

Now, he was half disposed to charge him with the whole slander; his passion prompted him to seek an object for his vengeance, and the very cool air of indifference Linton assumed was provocative of anger. The next moment, he felt ashamed of such intemperate warmth, and almost persuaded himself to tell him of his proposal for Mary Leicester, and thus prove the injustice of the suspicion about Lady Kilgoff.

“There’s a tap at the door, I think,” said Linton. “I suppose, if it’s Frobisher, or any of them, you’d rather not be bored?” And, as if divining the answer, he arose and opened it.

“Lord Kilgoff’s compliments, and requests Mr. Linton will come over to his room,” said his Lordship’s valet.

“Very well,” said Linton, and closed the door. “What can the old peer want at this time of night? Am I to bring a message to you, Cashel?”

Cashel gave an insolent laugh.

“Or shall I tell him the story of Davoust at Hamburg, when the Syndicate accused him of peculating, and mentioned some millions that he had abstracted from the treasury. ‘All untrue, gentlemen,’ said he; ‘I never heard of the money before, but since you have been polite enough to mention the fact, I ‘ll not show myself so ungrateful as to forget it.’ Do you think Kilgoff would see the à propos?”

With this speech, uttered in that half-jocular mood habitual to him, Linton left the room, while Cashel continued to ponder over the late scene, and its probable consequences; not the least serious of which was, that Linton was possessor of his secrets. Now thinking upon what he had just heard of Lady Kilgoff, now picturing to himself how Mary Leicester would regard his pledge to Maritaña, he walked impatiently up and down, when the door opened, and Linton appeared.

“Just as I surmised!” said he, throwing himself into a chair, and laughing heartily. “My Lord will be satisfied with nothing but a duel à mort.”

“I see no cause for mirth in such a contingency,” said Cashel, gravely; “the very rumor of it would ruin Lady Kilgoff.”

“That of course is a grave consideration,” said Linton, affecting seriousness; “but it is still more his than yours.”

“He is a dotard!” said Cashel, passionately, “and not to be thought of; she is young, beautiful, and unprotected. Her fortune is a hard one already, nor is there any need to make it still more cruel.”

“I half doubt she would think it so!” said Linton, with an air of levity, as he stooped to select a cigar.

“How do you mean, sir?” cried Cashel, angrily.

“Why, simply that, when you shoot my Lord, you’ll scarcely desert my Lady,” said he, with the same easy manner.

“You surely told him that his suspicions were unfounded and unjust; that my intimacy, however prompted by the greatest admiration, had never transgressed the line of respect?”

“Of course, my dear fellow, I said a thousand things of you that I did n’t believe – and, worse still, neither did he; but the upshot of all is, that he fancies it is a question between the peerage and the great untitled class; he has got it into his wise brain that the barons of Runnymede will rise from their monumental marble in horror and shame at such an invasion of ‘the order;’ and that there will be no longer security beneath the coronet when such a domestic Jack Cade as yourself goes at large.”

“I tell you again, Linton, – and let it be for the last time, – your pleasantry is most ill-timed. I cannot, I will not, gratify this old man’s humor, and make myself ridiculous to pamper his absurd vanity. Besides, to throw a slander upon his wife, he must seek another instrument.”

By accident, mere accident, Cashel threw a more than usual significance into these last few words; and Linton, whose command over his features rarely failed, taken suddenly by what seemed a charge, grew deep red.

Cashel started as he saw the effect of his speech; he was like one who sees his chance shot has exploded a magazine.

“What!” cried he, “have you a grudge in that quarter, and is it thus you would pay it?”

“I hope you mean this in jest, Cashel?” said Linton, with a voice of forced calm.

“Faith, I never was less in a mood for joking; my words have only such meaning as your heart accuses you of.”

“Come, come, then there is no harm done. But pray, be advised, and never say as much to any one who has less regard for you. And now, once more, what shall we do with Kilgoff? He has charged me to carry you a message, and I only undertook the mission in the hope of some accommodation, – something that should keep the whole affair strictly amongst ourselves.”

“Then you wish for my answer?”

“Of course.”

“It is soon said. I ‘ll not meet him.”

“Not meet him? But just consider – ”

“I have considered, and I tell you once more I ‘ll not meet him. He cannot lay with truth any injury at my door; and I will not, to indulge his petulant vanity, be led to injure one whose fair fame is of more moment than our absurd differences.”

“I own to you, Cashel, this does not strike me as a wise course. By going out and receiving his fire, you have an opportunity of declaring on the ground your perfect innocence of the charge; at least, such, I fancy, would be what I should do, in a like event. I would say, ‘My Lord, it is your pleasure, under a very grave and great misconception, to desire to take my life. I have stood here for you once, and will do so again, as many times as you please, till either your vengeance be satisfied or your error recognized; simply repeating, as I now do, that I am innocent.’ In this way you will show that personal risk is nothing with you in comparison with the assertion of a fact that regards another far more nearly than yourself. I will not dispute with you which line is the better one; but, so much will I say, This is what ‘the World’ would look for.”

The word was a spell! Cashel felt himself in a difficulty perfectly novel; he was, as it were, arraigned to appear before a court of whose proceedings he knew little or nothing. How “the World” would regard the affair, was the whole question, – what “the World” would say of Lady Kilgoff, – how receive her exculpation. Now Linton assuredly knew this same “World” well; he knew it in its rare moods of good-humor, when it is pleased to speak its flatteries to some popular idol of the hour; and he knew it in its more congenial temper, when it utters its fatal judgments on unproved delinquency and imputed wrong.

None knew better than himself the course by which the “Holy Office” of slander disseminates its decrees, and he had often impressed Roland with a suitable awe of its mysterious doings. The word was, then, talismanic; for, however at the bar of Conscience he might stand acquitted, Cashel knew that it was to another and very different jurisdiction the appeal should be made. Linton saw what was passing in his mind, for he had often watched him in similar conflicts, and he hastened to press his advantage.

“Understand me well, Cashel; I do not pretend to say that this is the common-sense solution of such a difficulty; nor is it the mode which a man with frankness of character and honorable intentions would perhaps have selected; but it is the way in which the world will expect to see it treated, and any deviation from which would be regarded as a solecism in our established code of conduct.”

“In what position will it place her? That’s the only question worth considering.”

“Perfect exculpation. You, as I said before, receive Kilgoff’s fire, and protest your entire innocence; my Lord accepts your assurance, and goes home to breakfast —voilà tout!”

“What an absurd situation! I declare to you I shrink from the ridicule that must attach to such a rencontre, meeting a man of his age and infirmity!”

“They make pistols admirably now-a-days,” said Linton, dryly; “even the least athletic can pull a hair-trigger.”

Cashel made no answer to this speech, but stood still, uncertain how to act.

“Come, come,” said Linton, “you are giving the whole thing an importance it does not merit; just let the old peer have the pleasure of his bit of heroism, and it will all end as I have mentioned. They ‘ll leave this to-morrow early, reach Killaloe to breakfast, whence Kilgoff will start for the place of meeting, and, by ten o’clock, you ‘ll be there also. The only matter to arrange is, whom you ‘ll get Were it a real affair, I ‘d say Upton, or Frobisher; but, here, it is a question of secrecy, not skill. I ‘d advise, if possible, your having MacFarline.”

“Sir Andrew?” said Cashel, half laughing.

“Yes; his age and standing are precisely what we want here. He’ll not refuse you; and if he should, it’s only telling Lady Janet that we want to shoot Kilgoff, and she ‘ll order him out at once.”

“I protest it looks more absurd than ever!” said Roland, impatiently.

“That is merely your own prejudice,” said Linton. “You cannot regard single combat but as a life struggle between two men, equal not merely in arms, but alike in bodily energy, prowess, skill, and courage. We look on the matter here as a mere lottery, wherein the less expert as often draws the prize – But there, as I vow, that was two o’clock! It struck, and I promised to see Kilgoff again to-night. By the way, he ‘ll want horses. Where can he get them?”

“Let him take mine; there are plenty of them, and he ‘ll never know anything of it.”

“Very true. What an obliging adversary, that actually ‘posts’ his enemy to the ground!”

“How am I to see MacFarline to-night?”

“You ‘ll have to call him out of bed. Let Flint say there ‘s an orderly from Limerick with despatches; that Biddy Molowney won’t pay her poor-rate, or Paddy Flanagan has rescued his pig, and the magistrates are calling for the Fifty-something and two squadrons of horse, to protect the police. You’ll soon have him up; and, once up, his Scotch blood will make him as discreet as an arch-deacon. So, good-night; add a codicil to your will in favor of my Lady, and to bed.”

With this Linton took his candle and retired.

Cashel, once more alone, began to ponder over the difficulty of his position. The more he reasoned on the matter, the stronger appeared his fears that Lady Kilgoff’s name would be compromised by a foolish and unmeaning quarrel; while, for himself, he saw nothing but ridicule and shame from his compliance. That omnipotent arbiter, “the World,” might indeed be satisfied, but Roland suspected that few of its better-judging members would hesitate to condemn a course as unfeeling as it was unwise.

A quick, sharp knocking at the door of his room aroused him from his musings; it was Lady Kilgoff’s maid, breathless and agitated. She came to say that Lord Kilgoff, after a scene of passionate excitement with her Ladyship, had been seized with paralysis, and that he was now lying powerless and unconscious on his bed.

“Come, sir, for mercy’s sake; come quickly. My Lady is distracted, nor can any of us think of what to do.”

Cashel scratched a few lines in pencil to Tiernay, requesting his immediate presence, and ringing for his servant, at once despatched a message to the village. This done, he followed the maid to Lord Kilgoff’s chamber.